Thanksgiving (2023)

Whether directly or indirectly, the Grindhouse movie is arguably one of the more influential "failures" of the past couple of decades. So many other films have taken a cue from it, and some of the fun fake trailers have now been made into full features. We've had TWO Machete movies by now, one Hobo With A Shotgun, and now Thanksgiving, a film that fans were wanting to see made as soon as they started laughing at the entertaining ridiculousness of Eli Roth's trailer. 

Things start off with some Black Friday carnage, and I do mean carnage. As openers go, Thanksgiving has a corker. It's gory, it presents a varied group of people who could all then have a motivation to kill, and it's memorable. If the rest of the film was then a much more subdued piece, saving major kills for the final act, then it would still be worth your time. It's certainly not subdued though, and the kills are well-spaced throughout, as well as being nicely constructed (from the playful camerawork to the gore gags). The killer is someone wearing a John Carver mask, and, as the tagline says, there will be no leftovers.

Written by Jeff Rendell, who worked on developing the original concept with Roth and making the most of the premise (ensuring enough space for all of the trimmings, shall we say), Thanksgiving is an absolute blast from start to finish. The younger cast members, including Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Thomas Sanelli, Gabriel Davenport, and Jenna Warren, all do a decent job of trying to unmask a killer before he or she takes them all out of the picture, and the likes of Patrick Dempsey, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon, Rick Hoffman, and Karen Cliche do well as the adults who may find themselves in just as much danger as the youngsters. Joe Delfin is right in the middle of those two main groups, which gives me a chance to single him out here as an extra treat in a film full of them.

Roth is a divisive figure, although you could say that about almost any horror movie director to have emerged in the 21st century. I certainly see why some would take such a dislike to him though, with his worryingly easy way of channeling the voice of at least one typical douchebro into most of his movies. He certainly knows what slasher movie fans want to see though, and delivers it in spades. Maintaining just the right tone throughout, no easy feat when it comes to a couple of the more memorable set-pieces, Roth and Rendell present a fine selection of red herrings, some imaginative kills, and the expected reveal and explanation during the grand finale. The humour works well, especially when it's underlining the holiday theme of the murders, and the survivors do just enough to keep you rooting for them at the end, even if they aren't exactly the most immediately likeable individuals.

I tend to like Roth movies, although I have often had to rewatch them to fully make my mind up. He may be abrasive, he may be over-exposed, and he may sometimes let his mouth write cheques that his film-making body can't cash, but he certainly knows the specific horror movies that he likes to reference and be influenced by. Thanksgiving is impressive because it not only manages to deliver the slasher movie goodies, but it does so without making use of the self-aware and meta layering that almost every other big American slasher movie has contained since Wes Craven helped that style become hugely popular. 

That's not cranberry sauce being sprayed around the place, and this is definitely no turkey.

8/10

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Borderlands (2024)

A sci-fi action movie based on a videogame I haven't played from a director who usually does his best work in the horror genre, and starring Kevin Hart in a role that would seem to be ideal for almost anyone other than Kevin Hart? I couldn't work up any enthusiasm to see Borderlands when it landed in cinemas, after a very long delay, and the disappointing box office performance and many negative reviews made me believe that I had been right to keep it low on my list of priorities. I knew I would get to it eventually though. And today was the fateful day. Maybe I should have delayed it by another few weeks or years though.

Cate Blanchett plays Lilith, a bounty hunter who ends up joining a group of people who all end up on a quest to locate and open a secret vault on the planet of Pandora. There's Roland (Hart, trying to be the leader of the gang), Krieg (the strong and silent type, played by Florian Munteanu), a small robot named Claptrap (voice by Jack Black), and the destruction-loving Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). They will eventually be joined, at least temporarily, by Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and someone named Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) who may be hiding his true motivation for wanting to stay close to the crew.

There may be lots of little details here for fans of the videogames, (I don't know) and there may be some production design and character arcs that have been directly translated, (again . . . I don't know), but what there IS here is some horrible plotting, a complete lack of any excitement, and a couple of action set-pieces that do nothing to justify the time spent enduring the rest of the film. Because it is an endurance test. Few of the cast feel well-suited to their roles, and the film itself is exactly in line with a trailer that gave many people the idea of making a meme joke in the format that ends with the line "we have Guardians Of The Galaxy at home" and then shows the poster for this as the aforementioned lesser substitute option.

None of the characters here have anything really going on below the surface, but Blanchett manages to make her own involvement rewarding to those who can enjoy her simply swaggering around onscreen with a fantasticaly-sculpted bright red hairdo atop her head. Hart is never convincing, Greenblatt has a higher energy level that keeps her out of sync with the rest of the group, and makes her slightly annoying for most of her screentime, and Jack Black's vocal performance is the equivalent of being stuck beside the most annoying "office joker" for the entirety of the big annual night out. Munteanu is decent, helped by the fact that he doesn't really have much to say, Curtis has some fun in her thankless role, and there's a fun cameo from Gina Gershon. As for Ramírez, he's one of the weakest movie villains in recent years. Not allowed to make a strong enough impression, his character fails to cast the required shadow over the movie, leaving the actor struggling to be remembered as soon as the end credits roll.

Movies based on videogames nowadays should no longer be dismissed as quickly as they used to be, but this seems determined to take up a place alongside the worst of the game-to-screen adaptations we have seen over the years. I cannot say if there is still enough here to please fans of the game series, but I can definitely say that there's nothing here to please fans of Eli Roth. In fact, there's no real indicator of his involvement, unless you count the fact that he apparently cannot direct decent action set-pieces to save his life (seriously . . . how do you mess up the chance to choreograph a big fight sequence to the Motorhead song "Ace Of Spades"?). Having also written the screenplay with Joe Abercrombie, it's obvious who is most to blame here, but it's also obvious that he might be able to shake himself off and move on quickly enough, having his own credit overshadowed by the brand name that he was given the responsibility of turning into a hit movie.

I would advise those who love the game of Borderlands to keep playing it, rather than giving this movie their time. On the plus side, maybe some confusion will lead people to a very different movie named Borderlands (renamed as Final Prayer in some territories). I give this some bonus points for how much I enjoyed Blanchett here, but others wouldn't be half as kind.

4/10

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The House With A Clock In Its Walls (2018)

IF you don't mind his presence in films, Jack Black has spent the past 10-15 years steadily building up a great selection of family-friendly adventure films. Okay, I'm the only one who enjoyed Gulliver's Travels but most people seemed to enjoy the Kung Fu Panda movies, School Of Rock, Goosebumps, and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. And here's another to add to the list, a film full of magical delights that is an unexpected directorial effort from Eli Roth (a man more well-known for his gory horror movies and twisted thrillers).

Owen Vaccaro plays Lewis Barnavelt, a young boy who ends up going to stay with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Black) after his parents die in a car crash. Uncle Jonathan lives in a very strange house, is himself a very strange individual, and has a good friend in the shape of the very strange Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett). There's a lot of magic being bandied around, and Lewis wants to learn how to use it as soon as he sees it happening, and that clock in the walls, a device placed there by a warlock for reasons unknown. But it's counting down to something, and that something can't be good.

Based on a John Bellairs book that was first published in the early 1970s, The House With A Clock In Its Walls manages to feel surprisingly fresh and fun, despite not being entirely dissimilar to so many other movies we have seen aimed at children in the post-Potter entertainment years. A large part of that is to do with the cast but it's equally down to the surprisingly spot-on handling of the material by Roth, working from a script by Eric Kripke. This is not a film concerned with mystery and personal discovery, it's a film about magic. Young Lewis finds out about it quite quickly, making it a very normal part of his life for most of the movie, and the fun and thrills come from that magic being used, and from a third act that culminates with the final ticking and tocking of the clock.

Black is as energetic and amusing as he usually is (IF you like him, those who don't will want to find some other viewing choice), and Vaccaro is perfectly likeable in his main role, but it's always a lot of fun to see Blanchett in a lighter role, and she's her usual wonderful presence here. You also get Lorenza Izzo in a small, but important, role, and Renee Elise Goldsberry and Kyle MacLachlan as the two main characters who want to be there when the clock finishes the countdown. Colleen Camp is a neighbour who witnesses some odd stuff going on, Sunny Suljic play a boy who befriends Lewis, but may just be using him, and there's an array of enjoyable CGI creations that have fun personalities of their own (the best being a pet armchair that acts like an excitable puppy).

You can probably already guess the main problem that the film has. It's just too similar to so many others that we've seen over the past decade or so. The fantastical elements don't quite go as far as they could, it lacks some tension, and the grand finale feels more like an afterthought. There are also some toilet humour gags that don't feel in line with the rest of the film, just a couple of them but they're in there. These things aren't enough to spoil the whole movie, they just drag it down slightly.

Roth will always have his detractors, no matter what genre he tries his hand at, as will Black, so that also provides a lot of people with more reasons to give this a miss. I think it's worth your time though, especially if you have children at just the right age for it (probably between 6-14 being the optimum demographic . . . or anyone with the same mental age as me).

7/10

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Death Wish (2018)

I was not looking forward to Death Wish, the remake of the 1974 Michael Winner film, for a number of reasons. Despite me enjoying a number of his films, I didn’t think director Eli Roth would be a good fit for the material, Bruce Willis in any leading role nowadays gives me concern, and there were trailers that didn’t look promising. The one small shred of hope I had was that they’d kept enough of the ideas contained in the original script, by Joe Carnahan, to make this more interesting and relevant for a new generation.

Willis plays Paul Kersey, a surgeon who we first see losing his battle to save the life of a shot police officer before heading off to try and save the life of the man who shot him. That’s what he does. He saves lives. When not saving lives, he spends time with his family (his wife, Elizabeth Shue, and daughter, Camila Morrone, and also his brother, Vincent D’Onofrio) and seems to have everything in place for a content time. That all changes when a robbery leaves his wife dead and his daughter in a coma. Frustrated by the fact that it looks as if the police won’t make much progress, Kersey becomes a deadly vigilante, unsure of his own capability at first but quickly becoming more confident in his role.

There are a number of plus points here. Making Kersey a surgeon, rather than the architect he was in the original movie, is a good move. It further illustrates the transition from peaceful family man to gun-toting “grim reaper”, and it allows him to do more to cover his own tracks (he picks up clothing that is due to be disposed of by the hospital, he can treat some of his own wounds). There are also a couple of good points made about modern attitudes and accessibility to dangerous weaponry and information. These points may be hidden away beneath the sheen and the montage moments that throw AC/DC alongside the visuals, but they’re still there nonetheless, adding at least a modicum on intelligence and commentary that didn't have to be included.

Willis is slightly less comatose than he has been in so many other roles in the past decade, but he’s still the weakest link of the main cast. One moment that has him trying to convey the pain at what the criminals did to his loved ones is almost laughably bad, but he's better when growing more at ease with the death-dealing vengeance. D’Onofrio is as good as he always is, Shue and Morrone do well in their supporting roles, and Dean Norris puts in yet another great turn as the main investigating officer, a man who seems to be earnest in wanting to help and also starts to put two and two together as the criminal bodies start to pile up.

Roth does well in the director's chair. Everything moves along quickly, and predictably, enough and there are a few impressive moments of grue that serve as a reminder of who is at the helm. He makes some mis-steps, as he is won't to do in most of his movies, but makes a better fist of things than many other directors I could have considered for the job.

It's not as good as the original, which is expected, but this ends up being a perfectly serviceable reworking of the material for those who want to give it 100 minutes of their time (or thereabouts).

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.
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The Green Inferno (2013)

Please note, this is my same review as it originally appeared over at Flickfeast. But f you didn't see it there then please enjoy it now.

Expectations have been high ever since Eli Roth announced that he was working on a cannibal movie. The fact that it was titled The Green Inferno – a title that was originally going to be used for Cannibal Holocaust (and ended up being the title of a cash-in “sequel”) – clued most horror fans in to the fact that this should be a goodie. It should be intense, gory and slightly disturbing.

Thank goodness, then, that The Green Inferno is intense, gory and slightly disturbing. It may well be the best film that Roth has directed so far, and it’s certainly the best, full-on, cannibal movie that I can think of since the heyday of the subgenre. It takes time to put everything in place, but viewers are then rewarded with a second half that moves from gruesome set-piece to gruesome set-piece.
The plot sees a bunch of young activists travelling from America to Peru to protest against the destruction of the natural habitat by a nasty corporation with nasty, big bulldozers. That’s dangerous enough, thanks to the armed guards on the site, yet it’s nothing compared to what happens after the protest. The small plane that they’re travelling in crashes, leaving them in the middle of the jungle. However, they’re not alone. It’s not long until some jungle inhabitants drug the youngsters, take them back to their village, and start to plan lunch.

It’s hard for me to think of any major flaws here. The characters, despite being potential menu courses, are all quite well-written, and certainly all get enough moments to mark themselves out from the group. This was a pleasant surprise, as I really expected a bunch of unlikable and interchangeable victims, but that wasn’t the case. The first half might be slow for some, yet Roth rewards everyone with a second half that starts to deliver the goods and doesn’t really let up until the end credits. Even the humour, so often an easy source of criticism in his previous movies, is perfectly pitched here. The movie doesn’t provide a lot of obvious laughs, although there are some, but the sly wit of the commentary here is probably the furthest that Roth has ever moved away from his comfort zone of “Jock talk”. Cannibal Holocaust was about people meddling where they had no right, and different forms of savagery, from the visitors and from the local inhabitants. The Green Inferno is about people meddling where they have no right, and also pretending to do more, and be better, even while operating within a protective bubble of privilege and ignorance.

The cast all do well, with Lorenza Izzo really easy to root for as the nominal leading lady. Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sky Ferreira, Magda Apanowicz, and Nicolas Martinez all make their characters feel like proper individuals, as opposed to “potential victim #2″ or “shrieking white girl”, for example. They’re all helped by the script, which Roth wrote with Guillermo Amoedo, and it also helps that a few of the people involved will be familiar to fans who saw Aftershock. They’re vaguely recognisable, yet not so famous to be exempt from any of the ordeals that the cannibals may have planned for them. Richard Burgi also does well with his few minutes of screentime, although he gets to avoid the jungle madness.

With some lush cinematography, an appropriate score by Manuel Riveiro, and a real feeling of authenticity to the whole thing, The Green Inferno manages to cram in all of the obvious homages that fans of the cannibal movie subgenre will expect while also standing proudly as a new leader in the ravenous, though admittedly sparse nowadays, pack. The screen may not be dripping with gore at every opportunity, which only makes it all the more powerful when it’s put front and centre (kudos to the special effects guys for such moments of visceral brilliance).

Roth is a master of hype, and it seems as if he’s been building up The Green Inferno for a long, long time. That will inevitably lead some people to view the film and feel disappointment. Hell, this review will also help to do that, so I apologise for getting your hopes up. I won’t apologise too profusely, however, as I feel that, on this occasion, you CAN believe the hype. The Green Inferno is a modern horror classic . . . . . . . . . . . . for those who have the stomach for it.

9/10.

Aftershock (2012)

Directed by Nicolas Lopez, Aftershock is yet another movie that many people will most readily associate with Eli Roth. Why? Well, he produced the movie, helped write the screenplay (with Lopez and Guillermo Amoedo) and also takes on one of the lead roles. Roth is great at engaging with fans and publicising movies that he's involved with, but the downside is that everyone just thinks of them as "Eli Roth movies" - if you think I am talking nonsense then just ask a random selection of a dozen people who directed The Last Exorcism. See?

But I digress.

Roth plays a character only known as Gringo, a young man who is enjoying some time in Chile with a couple of friends/acquaintances (Ariel Levy and Nicolas Martinez) when the memorable partying is rudely interrupted by an even more memorable earthquake. The earthquake causes no small amount of damage and death, but the survivors soon realise that the dark side of mother nature can be matched by the dark side of human nature.

If you had a problem with Hostel (a movie I love, but some seem to think that it shows up Roth as a complete xenophobe) then you're really not going to like the general misanthropy on display here. As well as showing a situation in Chile that goes downhil fast this just casts everyone as dangerous, selfish pieces of crap who often don't take much to be pushed into committing terrible crimes.

The acting is uneven, to put it nicely. Roth is okay in his role, but not great. Levy and Martinez are worse, and their characters are just so hard to sympathise with that viewers just won't care when all hell breaks loose. Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko and Lorenza Izzo are all pretty enough, but not that great at actually acting, so viewers won't care about them either.

Director Lopez at least gets the carnage and nastiness right. When that's onscreen the movie is at least entertaining. Some fine gore gags pop up here and there, and there are one or two squirm-inducing moments. If only the grue and violence had been accompanied by decent characters and a solid script then this could have been a solid, fun, horror-tinged, disaster movie. As it stands, it's a disappointment.

Oh, and avoid the trailer for this one as it commits the cardinal sin of revealing the very end of the movie. Who the hell designs trailers and thinks that showing the final moment is a good idea?????

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Aftershock-Watch-Now-While-Theaters/dp/B00CQ3R1BA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368741901&sr=8-1&keywords=aftershock+eli+roth

Death Proof (2007)

While it must be said that Death Proof is much better as part of the Grindhouse experience, where it appears in a truncated form, revisiting the movie wasn't as painful as I had anticipated. It remains the weakest film from writer-director Quentin Tarantino, to date, but it's also full of many delights for fans of this kind of entertaining "trash".

The plot is actually very slight. The movie follows two different groups of girls and shows what happens when they run into a very dangerous driver known as Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, the highlight of the film). That's really all there is to it, with this plot providing Tarantino with the excuse he needs to set up some automotive carnage in the first half and a quite superb car chase during the grand finale.

The biggest problem that Death Proof has is the cast in the first half of the movie. Tarantino fills the film with his usual dialogue, but it's coming out of the mouths of young women who just aren't convincing as people who would be experienced and/or cool enough to have such tastes and conversations. Jordan Ladd, Vanessa Ferlito and Sydney Poitier may be lovely young women, but they're practically children compared to the characters normally delivering Tarantino soundbites. Rose McGowan is a saving grace, as is a lapdance sequence and a couple of choice music selections, but the rest of the first half is one big wasted opportunity when not putting Kurt Russell front and centre. Thankfully, things pick up enormously when the second group appears. Mary Elizabeth Winstead may play someone young and naive, but Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell all feel like adults with some experience of adult life.

The second-biggest problem that Death Proof has ties in with the first, it's the way in which Tarantino seems to be indulging himself. Of course, it could be argued that his best movies have stemmed from an urge to indulge himself, but this just takes it that bit further. The pacing is painfully slow at times, speeches serve little purpose except allowing the writer-director to relish his own dialogue and the casting is hit and miss because one or two people seem to be there for reasons other than their actual ability to act.

These problems, however, CAN be temporarily forgotten whenever Kurt Russell is reminding viewers of just how great he can be at becoming a full character or when cars are speeding along on tarmac. The finale of the movie keeps these two elements onscreen for an all-out, tyre-screeching, fender-bending car chase that feels like it could have come straight from the 1970s. Which means that the film is a partial success.

It still won't necessarily win you over entirely, but Death Proof is certainly a film worth revisiting at least once. Those car scenes, the pretty flawless soundtrack, some enjoyable dialogue exchanges and another top drawer performance from the one and only Mr. Russell end up ensuring that there's at least something to enjoy during its runtime.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Proof-Blu-ray/dp/B001L4I1XM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369753520&sr=8-1&keywords=death+proof+blu+ray

Or go for the full Grindhouse package with this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grindhouse-Collectors-Edition-Blu-ray/dp/B004C9MC9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370126861&sr=8-1&keywords=grindhouse+blu+ray